Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear the Department of Justice’s challenges to a Washington state law that made it easier for cleanup workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site to claim compensation for certain occupational illnesses. The highest court in the land, an independent branch of the federal government, said Monday […]

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) is the new top Republican on the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, which writes the first drafts of policies touching on defense nuclear programs at the Department of Energy, the panel’s GOP leadership said Monday. Lamborn slid into the leadership role after Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), the former strategic forces […]

The Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site, offline since late October for a combination of an operational outage and technical safety concerns, could get back up by the end of this month, a Department of Energy spokesperson said Monday. In late November, the facility near Aiken, S.C., was already in an outage […]

Sam Brinton will join the Department of Energy’s nuclear energy office as the agency’s second-in-command of nuclear waste issues, the nuclear-waste policy expert and current global political director for Deep Isolation announced Monday. Brinton, who currently serves as global political affairs director at aspirant nuclear-waste services company Deep Isolation, will become the Office of Nuclear […]

Three of the four major National Nuclear Security Administration nuclear-weapon sites still have active COVID-19 vaccine mandates in spite of a federal judge’s December order that barred enforcement of the government’s federal contractor mandate. The prime contractors for these sites mostly have not said why they chose to keep the mandates in place, though one […]

SHINE Technologies, Janesville, Wis., signed contracts with the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management to support the company’s initiative to domestically manufacture a medical isotope without highly enriched uranium, according to a DOE press release. The release did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, or the […]

Eventual winners of new multibillion-dollar contracts at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky are expected to use small businesses to perform work worth 15% to 20% of contract value, not counting the 120-day transition period. That is according to a detailed presentation on the $ 5.87-billion Portsmouth Decontamination and Decommissioning […]

Attempts by New Mexico’s attorney general to pit a federal nuclear waste law against a proposed commercial interim storage facility for spent fuel in Texas don’t pass legal muster, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told an appeals court Friday. State Attorney General Hector Balderas’s December argument that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) is “inextricably linked” […]

An ongoing federal study into alternative liquid-waste cleanup at the Hanford Site in Washington state should focus narrowly on finding the fastest way to get rid of low-level radioactive waste that can’t be solidified by the site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, a national academies panel recommended last week. The waste treatment plant, which is […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission planned to meet in January to discuss increasing production of tritium for nuclear weapons in civilian reactors operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, according to a notice posted online Tuesday. “The purpose of this informational meeting between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is to […]

The Department of Energy and the New Mexico Environment Department were to hold an online public meeting Thursday evening to discuss cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory under a 2016 consent agreement between the state and the feds that the state’s governor has lately criticized.  The meeting, run by the DOE Office of Environmental […]

New Jersey’s economic development commission can’t stop Holtec International from receiving an annual tax incentive payout, a state court ruled recently. The New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) must grant Holtec a $26 million payment from 2018 that is one part of a roughly $260 million state tax incentive the Camden, N.J.-based nuclear services company […]

Interested stakeholders should get a chance this month to chat with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about a recent staff report analyzing the agency’s ability to regulate large-scale transportation of spent nuclear fuel in the U.S., commission documents show. NRC staff plans to hold public meetings “beginning in January 2022” to discuss the results of its […]

James McConnell is the new No. 3 and top career civil servant at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the semi-autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency said before New Year’s. McConnell was appointed associate principal deputy administrator in December, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) website. In that role he would backstop the agency’s […]

After nearly 30 years in Congress, Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) won’t seek another term in the House, he told local media Monday. Rep. Rush, who was elected to serve Illinois’s 1st congressional district in 1992, won’t run for reelection in the 2022 midterms, he told the Chicago Sun-Times in an interview published Monday. Rush, […]

With litigation on a controversial contract award two years ago still ongoing, the Department of Energy has extended incumbent Swift & Staley as the landlord services provider at the Paducah Site in Kentucky through February, a spokesperson confirmed via email this week. Without the extension, first revealed in a U.S. Court of Federal Claims order, […]

The Department of Energy’s Environmental Management published draft solicitations Tuesday for two contracts potentially worth more than $7.7 billion combined at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky. The larger draft request for proposals (RFP) is for the potential $5.87-billion Portsmouth Decontamination and Decommissioning Contract, DOE said in a press release. […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration hopes its efforts to boost the domestic industry for Molybdenum-99 will result in commercial-scale availability of the medical isotope a couple years from now, according to an annual nonproliferation report the agency released before the holidays. Under its partnership with four U.S. companies the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “aims […]

A lawsuit against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over a proposed Texas interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel sputtered back to life in the early days of 2022, recent court filings show. The suit, filed in February by a coalition of anti-nuclear groups including the Sierra Club, Beyond Nuclear and the Texas-based minerals company Fasken […]

One of the first big milestones in the frenzy of legal challenges to commercially operated interim storage sites for spent nuclear fuel is coming up in a few weeks in Albuquerque, where a federal judge was due to hear arguments for and against tossing a lawsuit against a proposed Holtec site in the state’s southeastern […]

Despite the still-raging pandemic, Holtec International’s decommissioning and advanced nuclear business lines had a pretty good year, the nuclear services company said in a roll-up press release Monday. The Camden, N.J., based Holtec moved 207 casks of spent nuclear fuel into dry storage at 21 plants around the world in 2021, the company said in […]

Nuclear Waste Partnership, the Amentum-BWX Technologies team that runs the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, won 62% of its subjective fee for fiscal year 2021 and 72% of its overall fee, according to a recently-released scorecard from the Department of Energy. The contractor took home about $3.3 million out of a potential $5.3 […]

The U.S. Supreme Court plans to hear oral arguments Friday in two cases concerning the federal government’s authority to require vaccination against COVID-19 in certain situations. In one case, President Joe Biden versus the state of Missouri and nine other states, the issue is whether federal entities including the Department of Health and Human Services […]

The Department of Energy has picked up the first two-year option in its agreement with HPM Corp., the incumbent provider of occupational medical services to thousands of federal and contractors at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The three-year base period of the potential seven-year, $152-million contract with Kennewick. Wash.,-based HPM Corp. (HPMC), was due […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is drawing up more questions about Holtec International’s proposed interim storage facility in New Mexico, an agency spokesperson said Monday. NRC staff are “still preparing” the agency’s third round of Requests for Additional Information (RAIs) for Holtec’s proposed interim storage site in Eddy County, N.M., a spokesperson told Exchange Monitor via […]